Pure life, p.11
Pure Life, page 11
“We empower people.”
“God help em.” And he drank to grown-ass women.
She said something else but he was contemplating the bottle of Johnnie Walker Black, which made him think of Johnnie Walker Red, Ken Stabler’s drink, which made him think of Ken Stabler—not loitering flat-footed in the pocket with all day to throw, but repeating the same story every five minutes, which made him think of Ken Stabler’s brain, which made him think of Fifty-Five, who’d shot himself in the chest so as to leave his own intact, which made him think of Andre Waters, who’d shot himself in the mouth, which made him think of Jovan Belcher, who’d shot himself in the head after he shot the mother of his child nine times, which made him think of Terry Long, of Mike Webster tasing himself to sleep, of Forrest Blue, Mackey, Morrall, Ali, which made him think they used to call it punch drunk which made him drink his drink which made him realize what his girlfriend had said though he asked her to repeat it anyway.
“I said what if you don’t even have it.” She used a different voice now.
He couldn’t tell if she was being ingenuous, and spoke slowly: “So you’re not actually trying to piss me off?” He chased the whisky. “I checked all the boxes. They think Stage Two…the fuck!”
“But they can’t know for sure, right?”
“Well Jesus Christ,” but it was true. The only definitive way to diagnose it was direct examination of brain tissue, post-mortem. There was certainty only in death.
“So what do you want me to do?” he said. “Put one in my heart so they can have my brain in one piece?” They’d freeze and fix it, pickle it blanched and rubbery like a soft-boiled egg. Halve it, quarter it, cut the lobes into slices exactly five millimetres thick. Then mount them in wax for further thinning, the substance of fear, love, aggression, your children’s names, in slivers measured in millionths of millionths. Not quite nothing.
She sipped her water. “Don’t look at me like that,” she said, though she said it to her phone.
“Look at you like what? What are you talking about?”
“That doctor in Florida. That whatshisname.”
He tightened up. “You gave him his name.”
“He got famous for helping drug addicts.”
“He helps a lot of things. People branch out.”
“There’s lawsuits.”
“Show me someone famous who doesn’t get sued.”
“I’m just saying.”
“Stupid people say they’re just saying.”
“There were other issues going on—you told me yourself. Lots of drinking. There was the oxy thing going on.” The Xylocaine thing. Decadron. Problematic appearances on TV and radio. Slurred speech, rambling…incoherent, they said, and dropped him.
“Are you talking about…? You think I was just lit all the time?”
“Where do you go?”
“You weren’t even there.”
“Were you? You take out the garbage and don’t come back till five in the morning.”
He barely heard. The stranger he could become was arriving, he saw it on her face. Let it. Let self-pity have its say, then paranoia and rage, in that order; he was entitled.
“Or maybe you just think I’m faking this shit.”
The waitress who’d served them the day before came to the bar to put in an order and left. She might have been twenty-two and Nineteen watched her come and go as if no one were watching him.
“Only God loves ugly,” his girlfriend said. “Who is this man?”
Nineteen had turned and was addressing the bartender. “You know, some people should just know when to mind their own fucking business.”
Another dredged-up homily he’d heard before: “ ‘Words are seeds planted in the hearts and minds of others.’ ”
“Fuck that old bitch. Didn’t she take that shit with her?”
“ ‘Only sow what you wish to receive in return a hundredfold.’ ”
The vaguely biblical tone further enraged him; even her bullshit was stolen. “Why don’t you get a real job anyway? Direct sales my ass. Call it what the fuck it is.”
“…real enough to get your Chapter 7 ass financed here,” she murmured. It was true; somehow, through all the tribulations of drink and despair, she’d kept her credit intact.
“All you did was sign your name. Didn’t cost you a penny.” He decided to sow some more seeds. “But while we’re here…” He tilted his head in the general direction of the clinic. “They got a plastic surgeon over there. Once they set up shop again, why don’t you use that credit score to pump up that skinny ass like those fake cans of yours?”
He reached for her chest and she slapped his hand away. She looked at the top of his head. The response sat there on a skin-coloured polyurethane base but it now took the form of pity. It was his turn to unrecognize her; no Ladder of Success, no Queen’s Court of Sales, just flesh and blood—the real pink thing, wounded and demanding. Kind of beautiful and a little scary. The stuff of song. Fuck her.
“Alright,” she said softly, and took up her bag. “It’s your shitshow.” She stood. “Here’s not looking at you.”
The security guard had edged over. Nineteen ignored him, called the bartender Mario Lopez. “I thought she’d never. Let the wallowing begin.” He ordered another beer and asked the bartender to change the channel. The bartender said his name was Ephraim.
“On second thought,” his girlfriend said, “I’ll have what he’s having.”
“You don’t want what I’m having.” She’d stood but remained at the bar. Nineteen glared at her, then sighed. “Fuck it. I’ll drink that motherfucker too.” He grabbed the remote and clicked. Serena Williams speaking French over Spanish subtitles. The security guard cleared his throat. The bartender pulled a draft for the gringa and placed it on a coaster in front of her. Nineteen had formulated a toast, and when he raised his glass to propose it she tossed the contents of hers in his face.
He shut his eyes reflexively as it washed over his head, his shirt. A scream nearby, then laughter. There was a roar in his head or in the air. His face dripping, a cold spray. Wind. The floor heaved. The light almost hurt. He gripped the rail and opened his eyes.
They were crossing the wake of a container ship, its stern receding to his right—starboard, he still knew. Towers of bright-coloured steel boxes stacked on its deck. The ferry rocked again, sent up another burst of spume, then was out of the freighter’s wash and back in the blue-green chop of the Caribbean. He tasted it.
Nineteen stood in the curved peak of the bow, fairly soaked. He looked dead ahead. Only sky and sea that way, but to the left he saw distant land, faded hills—islands, perhaps. He looked around and saw only a young couple at the rail nearby, grinning at him, not quite as wet. They looked away. So did he. About ten yards aft (he still measured distances in yardage) along the sun-bright deck of the prow, a set of stairs rose to a narrow-railed deck that curved around the passenger cabin. There were people up there, out of reach of the spray, but she was not among them. A child was expelling something into a paper bag while a woman stood patiently beside, hand on her heaving back. The words PRIMO CLASE were stencilled on the cabin door next to them. The terror of another blackout was somewhat mitigated by its having occurred in first class.
The boat was looking familiar to him now, its aerodynamic curves and clean white lines; it was the ferry from the dock just west of the resort. Was he heading for the mainland, then? The thought carried no particular impact. He faced front again. To port, clouds had formed and the waves were grey with clots of black like ink in the crests; on the other side the sun shone and there were seabirds white against the dark sea, dark against the white sky.
He heard Spanish and felt alone. He was starting to feel certain she wasn’t on the boat at all. There’d been an argument.
The last time it had happened he’d been traumatized. Now the feeling was one of intense curiosity, the beginnings of anticipation. He looked down at his dripping self, still wearing the navy polo, white pants. Bulges in his pockets: wallet, passport, phone. It occurred to him she might have left him a message, but his phone was wet and wouldn’t even light up. It was kind of a relief. He briefly entertained the idea of dropping it overboard, then put it back in his pocket.
The wind roared, the deck hummed. He knew the throb of an engine and this felt different, smooth and high-powered like some kind of jet propulsion. Wherever they were going, they were getting there in a hurry. It suggested purpose, relieved him of decision. He looked around again. The couple were gone. He supposed he must look a little scary, planted in the utmost stem like some figurehead incarnate. It wasn’t his fault. Let the brutal wind dry his clothes if not clear his mind; he’d find a bar to take care of the latter but for now he hung to the rail. His right hand still bore the sting of salt water. He looked down and saw that his knuckles were split, a little bloody. A flap of skin. He didn’t panic, though he felt a brief swell of nausea he attributed to the vessel. Looked up again and now thought maybe land was verging on the far horizon, though he wasn’t sure.
When Nineteen debarked at the terminal in La Ceiba, his clothes were almost dry but his phone still wouldn’t work. He briefly considered taking the next ferry back, then discovered the next one didn’t leave till seven in the morning. It was out of his hands.
Outside it must have been nearly a hundred degrees and even the cab drivers seemed reluctant to be there. Most of them drove white Toyotas in various repair and few spoke English. One was so far along with child Nineteen was afraid she might break water en route. A short, neatly dressed man nearby wore a thin moustache and a baseball cap with the letter C stitched above the visor. He leaned against his car with his arms folded. “El centro,” he said calmly at intervals. “Doscientos lempiras.”
Nineteen was drawn to his composure, and to the cap. “Speak English?”
“Downtown. Ten dollar.” The driver gestured at his vehicle. “Aire acondicionado.” Nineteen got in.
He rode up front for the legroom, listening to Spanish news. Traffic was dangerous but purposeful; familiar red octagons said ALTO and were regarded as suggestions. There were more bikes and motorcycles and scooters than cars, bicycles equipped with lawn-mower engines. A car without doors. Ancient American school buses repurposed as local transit, still bearing the names of the districts they’d served. Wild palms. A woman on a rusty moped cut them off at twenty miles an hour without glance or gesture. She wore a house dress and hardhat and drove with a child on her lap and one behind, lashed to her waist with a length of hemp. There were surprisingly few horns and Nineteen felt insulated from tragedy, glad he wasn’t sober, witness to a form of natural selection.
“What?” he said, but the driver was talking to his radio. Traffic thinned and they were in a neighbourhood, a loose grid of dusty backstreets and squat houses of painted concrete or wood or plaster, or no paint at all. Cinder block. Slack colourful laundry hung everywhere. Bars on windows and razor wire. Two boys with buckets and rags operated a car wash under a sheet mounted on four crooked sticks. Their handmade sign said EL PRIMO. A leg hung off a hammock.
They rode in. Further downtown was a soldier with a machine gun guarding a Chinese restaurant in the middle of Central America. People boarding a bus being wanded for concealed weapons—even the children. Martial law or just another day. Traffic stalled and vendors wandered among the vehicles in the hot hazy light: “Pollo! Pollo! Agua! Agua!” The driver bought a plastic bag full of water like a small transparent pillow. Nineteen had another thirst, other hunger. They drove past a vacant trash-covered lot and in the middle was a tattered figure, a discarded human being sitting on a canted discarded toilet, pants down, reading a discarded newspaper as if ingesting its content and excreting it. Nineteen looked at the driver. The driver spoke to his phone.
The city centre was congested, static. As they crept through it the driver became impatient with Nineteen’s lack of destination. “¿Donde? ¿Aquí? Where you want?” Then he said “Hotel?” and Nineteen eagerly consented, because he recognized the word and because there would be English at a hotel, maybe a bar.
His money was not as dry as his clothes but didn’t have to be. He was calculating percentages when the cab rode off, the tip already figured in, or the driver just glad to be shed of him. The hotel was called the Iberia, a name on a smoked glass storefront. A man lay face-down on the sidewalk near the entrance. A puddle had seeped from beneath him and run down the sidewalk to the gutter in a divided stream so that passersby had to step twice over it. A broken vessel. An enormous flattened cockroach lay just beyond and between these two cautions Nineteen was persuaded to move on.
He walked, low on cash and daylight. At the corner someone shoved a mottled yellow object up at him: “Bery good, bery good.” An old woman cross-legged on the sidewalk, hawking half-rotten fruit out of the bell of a hat. So buy a piece and throw it away, help her out. It was too much too soon. He stepped into the street. A horn blared and he was jostled.
“¡Cuidado!” a voice yelled and for a second he felt like hitting someone. He saw a dirty white van, a small air conditioner sticking out the back like you’d see in someone’s window. People here walked and talked and drove all the same way. It was nothing personal. He finished crossing.
Faces, furtive dark-eyed scrutiny. Nineteen looked around for a destination. A shoe store, auto parts, another hotel, a business that bulletproofed cars, all crammed together in low shabby buildings painted in pleasant watercolour. Spanish curves of colonial balconies, relics of a wretched past, and whose purposes did they serve in this second-hand present? Signs tried to tell him: PICO RICO. SANDÁLIA. TIENDA IMPORTADORA. The barred windows, but no bars or banks. Someone’s brakes squealed. He passed a cell phone store and wondered for a moment if they could help him. Cómo dice “My phone is wet”? They say bury it in rice for a while. No shortage of rice here, and he wondered if he really wanted it fixed.
Another street, another sidewalk. A little man with no shoes or hair or teeth jumped in his face. He had wizened reddish-brown skin and for some reason a blue tongue.
“Hey, American? You know where you’re going? You lost?” Were both so obvious? This person looked as though he would have spoken a tribal tongue on the verge of extinction, but his English was perfectly clear.
Nineteen pointed vaguely ahead in spite of himself, slowed but didn’t stop.
The man kept pace, backpedalling without looking. “I’m not from around here, either. I’m from Costa Rica.” Nineteen had been there, remembered only that it was legal to urinate in public. He walked faster. “Hey, I got important information for you!”
The blue tongue—a child eating candy, or maybe a medical condition. Nineteen felt pity and disgust. He tried to keep his voice low. “I’m just trying to—”
“Right on your way, just keep going! Banco Atlántida, on your right.”
Nineteen was too startled to thank him.
“Grassyass,” the man said in mock Yankee twang. “De nada, my friend. God bless America.” Finally, he looked where he was going. “Hey, can you help me get something to eat? I take dollars.” A small joke, a little laugh.
Nineteen did not want accompaniment to the bank, and they stepped into a doorway. People glanced and kept going. His last two singles. “Pura vida,” the man said before he disappeared like a figure in a fairy tale. A note of ironic disappointment; tourists were supposed to be rich.
The bank consisted of an ATM behind a scuffed glass door but it was where the man said it would be. A short line, a kid in uniform with a pistol-grip shotgun. He nodded. Nineteen was ecstatic when his swipe unlocked the door. The machine asked him if he wanted to transact in English, and then it was just a matter of zeroes. He was always amazed at the sums foreign currency required. He drew his limit, off the credit card his girlfriend had co-signed for.
Armed with cash he could look them in the eye now, if not answer the question he saw there. They were taller than he’d expected, some with features somehow ancient—not old but of another time, another world. Indigenous. Boys in wife beaters or clean white polos tucked into dollar-store jeans. Girls gifted with song. He kept seeing the word baleadas— something to eat? He’d forgotten about the woman with the fruit. He saw one sleeping on cardboard, barefoot, hand open as if dreaming in want. He thought he might drop some money in it, decided on prayer instead. People living in their clothes, shoes for a pillow.
Power lines and palm leaves, the sidewalk buckled like a drawbridge. He came to a park and stopped. There were concrete benches in shade and he thought about sitting on one. Pink flowers sprouted from bark. Empty brick planters and concrete fountains drained of water, but the place looked well-kept and the only sign of disorder was another drunk asleep at the foot of an enormous tree. Its trunk was limestoned white at the base and wide as the man was long, vast outspread boughs crooked and leafless with long flat vines pending like strips of withered flesh. A bronze statue of a man in uniform stood in the middle of the park. He was called the George Washington of Central America, but George Washington had not supervised his own execution by firing squad. There was also a statue of Lempira but the soldier had pride of place; the tree was there before either of them were born and had given the city its name.
Nineteen saw the black vultures now and decided against the benches. He looked across the street. A small cathedral with two belfries and an electric cross between them. The cell phone tower behind was taller and the mountains beyond rose above everything. Then a Texaco station, Wendy’s, and the signs continued to speak American English. Popeye’s, Pizza Hut, Burger King (La Casa del Whopper). He had not eaten since that morning, and he was starting to wonder if this was still the same day. He went in.
The air conditioning disabled him, and so did the smell. He squinted; the sun had rendered him half-blind. He was sweating. He stood six feet from the register and a girl in fast-food dress said, “¿Puedo tomar su orden?” His head began to ring, his mouth hung open. Just look at the pictures. HAMBURGUESAS A LA PARRILLA. POLLO Y MAS.
